I've been playing
Eve Online for almost a year now and it has never ceased to amaze me. The game can be as simple as you want it to be or as complex as you like. For me and my two paid for accounts, I've experienced everything from pvp combat to manufacturing my own weapons/ships and selling them, to going around trying to find new trade routes. I joined when
Red Moon Rising was approaching its second major update, and here I am to experience the dawning of the
Revelations expansion.
Over the past summer, PVP has gone from intense to insane. Motherships and
Titans have been available since RMR, but they were never viable until just recently due to the costs and time involved. These are ships that take weeks of mineral and materials gathering by alliances containing over a thousand people. Going into combat, you can potentially see everything from the lowly frigate, to ships the size of the death star. Unfortunately, the RMR setup of the game was lacking in its ability to handle the massive gang sizes the game is seeing now. It didn't quite live up to everybody's PVP expectations as people in smaller ships were generally 'instapopped' by the guys in the big ones who would ultimately be the primary targets of everyone in the other gang.
The player run markets are huge, but there is a cartel of people manufacturing the top of the line weapons and ships thanks to the mere handful of blueprints that get seeded. Some of these items were seeing price inflation of over 1500% and there we were, spending every last penny on them because they gave that edge in pvp combat.
Now however, the game is on to it's next (and as usual, free) expansion which went live this very morning.
Revelations. This expansion seeks to remedy much of this. Players are now given the opportunity to create their own blueprint copies based on items they already have in hopes of creating those elusive and pricey tech 2 items. Combat is seeing a big bump up with a much more military style structure being implemented in game. Players already follow a strict military hierarchy on Teamspeak, but now, fleet commanders are given more power. Combatants have the opportunity to take 'boosters', which are a smart drug which improve your combat abilities for a short period of time. Of course, manufacturers of these will be going to war in the PVP areas trying to get dominance over the resources.
All of this in a minor expansion. There are two more big patches to go till the Revelations expansion is considered complete. Each of them focuses on a different key aspect of the game. Part 1 focuses on creating new functionality, the future ones will focus on bugfixes and major PVP revamps. These will be launched sometime within the year and to be honest, I can't freaking wait.
As far as the new expansion goes, I haven't given it enough time. My industrial account is still not prepared for the new Invention feature and my combat account is currently focussed on different things. Market prices on the new items are astronomical thanks to people who want to capitalize on the current market shortage. Surprisingly, while lag around the major trade centers is downright ridiculous, the current population around there is equally high. I have never seen 600+ people in Jita all at once. The max I've seen anytime has been 300. Hopefully this is a sign of good things to come in the lag department since alliance warfare has been notorious for crashing various nodes on the cluster.
Anyone wanting to give the game a shot can grab a 14 day trial from the
Eve website
